During Avi Loeb’s interview, he mentions that he believes that scientists should be more transparent about their findings, making information public before it is fully confirmed, with the obvious disclaimer that it is not a consolidated finding yet. I would've liked to ask him how transparent scientists should be when addressing the public – not in an ideal scenario, but in our current world. Should scientists say that almost all models are wrong, and that we can never be sure of anything, due to the epistemological nature of science? While I believe most educated people will recognize that even if the models are not 100% right, the rigor required by scientific research makes those findings or principles more correct than common sense or some random thing they happen to believe in. The problem would arise with “deniers” of all kinds, who would likely think that even if science says they are wrong, because science is “inherently” wrong, then they are as correct as the scientists, which is just plain wrong. It’s an obvious fallacy, but that doesn’t mean that people won’t think like that, and it doesn’t mean that their actions due to that worldview aren’t harmful. So, I would have wanted to ask him how should the scientific community tackle the issue of transparency, as to not decrease the credibility of science in the eyes of the general public.
top of page
bottom of page
Pedro, I think your question is very intriguing. Although transparency would be good in the scientific community, we also do not want the general public to decide that scientific studies are unreliable. Even though there are some cases in which companies alter data to be monetarily beneficial for them, I would like to say this is not the case with most scientific studies. I also agree with your statement in saying models are not 100 percent correct and there will be people who do not understand this concept and think that science is unreliable. It would have been interesting to see how Professor Loeb would respond to this question.
This is a very interesting question Pedro and very relevant to the current world. Whether scientists should be completely transparent with the public or not is very difficult to answer. They want to establish trust with the public so that they will follow their guidelines or suggestions so they obviously do not want to express any chance of doubt, but in the rare case that their science turns out to be incorrect, it can make them look very dishonest and disingenuous. As such, I think the science community should be completely transparent with how accurate their models are, because the general public will catch on if they are being misleading.